YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Conti

lines on the record: 187
first: 2023-02-07
most recent: 2023-02-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Bringing different sort of perspectives and trying to tease apart the differences in those perspectives, right? And I think what it points out is that We tend to conflate things as human beings, right? And to take two different things and try and make them into one. But we also, I think on the other end of the spectrum, get very overly reductionist. And I think that when we get to overly reductionist, we lose the ability to learn from anything or to generate meaning, right? I mean, think about Sartre, who the thought of existentialism is so consistent with him, right? Who on the one hand wrote about very clear terms like this is what it is and this is what it isn't. And here's how you're going to make your meaning in a very academically proscribed way. But he also wrote short stories like the wall, right? Where there's something totally absurd happens, right? As part of the story, right? So I think what ends up happening is people either reduce themselves or get associated with something that by being overly reductionist takes us away from meaning, right? The idea that, look, we don't know if there is an overarching religious meaning.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we can get jaded as we and I were just talking about a few minutes ago. We can accentuate the negative and foster the negative and come to a place where we're looking for some in-depth philosophical answer, you know, some thick book, you know, that's going to explain all that to us instead of the simplicity that we've been talking about. I think humility, gratitude helps us have just simple positive experiences, feelings of contentment, feelings of connection with another person, learning, discovery. And I think the answer to Kate Moo's question is yes, and I think it lies in his writing about when he was a child, which I think he saw as less important than his later writings and the intellectual heaviness when I think maybe he had lost his way a little bit from the things he understood when he was younger.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. I think the answer is yes. And I think Kamu answered it, yes too. I love his writing. And I think there was a... Streak of nihilism that I think grew in his writing over the years and the thought is, I think, that KMU died by suicide. I think we're not sure of that because it was a car accident. But I've always read that as the primary scholarly opinion. And I think it's interesting that after his death, a book called The First Man was published, which I don't know if he had intended to publish. I don't remember the specifics about it, but it's about him as a child, right? And it's interesting. The first man, he was the first man in his existence, right? The most the one that felt and experienced everything. And there's sadness and distress and all in that book, but there's a beauty of life and living and experience. And I think to compare that beauty, like that's life, even if something's difficult and scary and sad, like there's something beautiful around the corner and here's a kind person and a new discovery, you know, more what was in him as a child.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all should be wanting, but it's even, it's kind of an afterthought that, oh, some people are like that as opposed to, wait a second, right? Like what's going on with them? And let's do all of that.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I'm being who I'm choosing to be, right? And that doesn't have to be in some big way. I'm not saying that means any one specific thing. You know, that can mean the person who's taking care of their cat and tending their garden. Like that's enough. We have to have love, the ability to put good things out in the world and to put our ability to work and to make things different out into the world and make things better. And if we're doing that, we get happier across time because we come to a sense of peace with ourselves. I'm not supposed to be everything. I'm not supposed to do everything. I'm not supposed to fix everything, right? I'm also not supposed to suffer all the time for the things I haven't gotten right. You know what? I guess I'm kind of, and it leads back to Winnicott, right? The British physician, I'm good enough. And that seems to help people feel happy, you know, contentment and be generative and productive into later life. It's like that's what.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I think this leads us to, I think is a really important fact, right? That there are some people, like a significant subset of people who get happier as they get older. They have more contentment, a stronger sense of self. You might think, how could that ever happen, right? Like we're getting closer to death. We're accumulating insults, right? Like, you know, everything hurts a little bit more and we have less energy and we accumulate losses and traumas. Why would anyone be healthier across higher, if you happier across time? And what we see is it's linked to the things that we're talking about, right? It's linked to, say, let's say vulnerability versus pride. Like there's a good balance there, right? There's a lot of humility. There's a lot of self-esteem. The person is spending a lot of time standing back from the tapestry and looking at it, right? And what can come into people is in sort of a sense of equanimity. Like I sort of understand, you know, I'm being the best person I can.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You didn't do that well because you suck. You don't deserve anything good, right? Why should you even be alive, right? I mean, that's the negative voice that can gain so much force if there isn't a balance of healthy self-esteem. So I think because you're well balanced, you know, you have what you need. And then having more of it seems like, oh, that's not so good. But there are people whose negative voice isn't the grumpy cad it's hateful, right? And then that's a person who needs to bring that into greater balance.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make us feel bad. So, yes, we need vulnerability if we try and eliminate vulnerability, we're living miles into the envy, you know, land, right? So you're describing a healthy vulnerability, but then my brain says that's because on the other side of this, the seesaw, so to speak, has to be a healthy sense of self, whether we call it self-esteem or healthy pride. And then I'll cite what I think is the evidence for that is you describe the negative voice, right? As like the grumpy cat, right? That's a good negative voice to have, right? Because it's telling you, hey, that wasn't your best. Like, come on, do better, or right? Like, you can do better. Like this, you know, there's a negative voice in some ways, but it believes in you. Where that voice could be, it could be a negative voice that says,”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I think as you're telling me that, in order to be presumptuous, but I make some thoughts or some conclusions that tell me, hey, you're in a pretty healthy place, right? And the reason I say that is because I agree completely about vulnerability. I mean, think about humility and gratitude make us vulnerable, right? If like, well, I'm grateful, thank you. I'm grateful for you. You know, we could get shot down or something, you know, something bad could happen or something.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so a thought I would have about Let's say about some pride or some self esteem, right? It can work against vulnerability, right? Which we know can also in some situations push us towards jumping the boundary into envy and all of that. So think about vulnerability. If you conceive, okay, people are assailing me and you just go to a place of gratitude, you know, it can send a message that, okay, I'm just lucky and I hope I can continue to get lucky as opposed to like that's not true, right? Like there's there's ability inside of me and discernment inside of me that tells me I can have a greater sense of confidence that I'll navigate what comes my way, right? So because the pride or the self-esteem part is owning what we've contributed to the goodness we've created, right? Which does in a sense helps us feel better about ourselves and it also helps us feel armed again say the sling”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, people are different, and there may be idiosyncrasies of why one person is in a different place. But as a general rule, I think the answer is absolutely yes. I mean, people have evolved and I've worked with people who've really changed themselves and broadened their conception and understanding. They're in their 80s. I think we can do it at any stage of life. And I would make a case for intrapsychic. So not between people necessarily, right? But inside of oneself for the feeling of pride. And maybe if we call it self-esteem, right? Let's say we call it self-esteem, right? Or we could call it healthy pride. We could put either word to it. But if you think about what we're trying to avoid is say a sense of inadequacy, then it is good to sort of own what's ours. We can put ourselves a little bit out of balance, either in terms of building up resentments or in terms of decreasing self-confidence if we're not owning everything that's ours.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what it brings with it absolutely includes being assailed. There's no surprise there, right? That because of, because people who have anything good serve as lightning rods for envy. So then, yes, there will be people who want to make up lies or whatever they want to do because you become a lightning rod for envy by having succeeded at the thing you set out to do about which you can feel a healthy pride and gratitude, right? And then I think that kind of puts it in its place. I mean, you're still going to make decisions about it, but it makes sense then. Like you have a mechanism of understanding it that not only makes sense to you, but reflects the truth of what you actually have done and achieved and what's going on in the world around you.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you can say, well, you know, there was a time I sat out, I set forth to impact people, right? To be able to reach people and to impact them, right? And look, I feel a sense of both gratitude and pride that I've done that, because look, you did it because of your effort, right? Your work, your intelligence, your thoughts. Like you're responsible for it, right? But also, you feel gratitude because any one of us who's here and has any opportunity has reason to feel immense gratitude, right? So then you can say, okay, what's actually gone on here is something successful. I set out to do something and I'm doing it, right?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and there's a certain kind of psychotherapy that talks a lot about this idea that like, oh, everything is as it should be, right? Which doesn't mean from some moral or justice point, it's just that often if you look at things, One thing leads to another, to another, to another in a way that's actually very, very predictable, even though we might be surprised about it, right? And so an example, so I would say that gratitude often does come along with a healthy pride, right? So you could say in the example you gave, I'm being assailed on social media.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we're standing right up it, we're only going to see one part of it. We need to stand back from it. And, you know, I remember learning that religion studies class being really fascinated with that at the time. And I think that there are a lot of things we do that about, right? And in training ourselves to have an observing ego, what we're saying is, hey, just the busyness of life or my own impulses or the pool of emotions are trying to pull me up right close to whatever tapestry there is there. And I want to sort of resist that. I mean, I'm better off if I really stay further behind it and then I make a choice if I want to come close to it. If there's some really positive emotion or it's friendship or it's love or it's nurturing, you know what? Let me come right up to this, right? But I want to choose when I'm doing that. I don't want some drive I didn't decide to like take me by the back of the head and put me up against that tapestry.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decide if it means anything. You know, if I'm mad, right, someone cut me off, and I feel hatred and I want to destroy them. To stop me think, look, I've got that in me. Are the stressors running too high in my life? Is it really good? Should I Should I be on this road 10 minutes behind schedule? What am I really doing? So we can learn. But yes, it's an observation skill, right? And it's an observation skill that we can develop. I often think of it, there was something called the tapestry theory, which I think initially was a theodicy of explaining, I believe this is true, I'm not sure of this, that the idea was that, oh, we don't see God's plan because we're up too close to it, right? Like as if there was a beautiful tapestry on the wall.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most right among the very most in 20 years of working as a psychiatrist is how we are led by our feelings, our emotions as if they are truth. And then they create truth because we embrace what they're telling us as true. And that is, I think, incredibly, I think it's how people learn prejudice. I think it's how people learn self-hatred. I think it's how we learn so many destructive behaviors. And then the blinders on us come in more and more and more and more. So separate, you know, we're driven by what we feel unless we understand that what we feel is different from what we know to be true or what we can decide on one way or another.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing is to separate how we feel from what's true. We don't do a good job of that as humans. If I feel bad about myself, it's very easy to, then I conclude like I'm bad. If I feel ashamed of myself, I conclude I'm a terrible person who's shameful. This is that, you know, there's an old psychodynamic concept of what these call an observing ego still gets called that. It's not ego in the sense of arrogance, right? It's the ability to step outside and to see ourselves, right? So that's what lets us keep the difference between our feelings and what we know to be true. Like we could be very angry at someone. So I think that person's terrible. I think the person's stupid. I think that right now because something negative just passed between us. This inside of me, it's just because of how I feel. Like when I can separate that, how do I actually think about that person, right? And we get driven so frequently by how we feel because how we think, therefore what we believe, right, just kind of comes on its heels as if the feeling is dragging it along. And I've been struck by that. It's one of the things that has struck me so.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An emotion would trump everything. They stop paying attention to this, right? Now, safety is at stake, and we think differently, feel differently, behave differently, right? And this is what happens to us not just in situations where something drags us from, yanks us from one emotional state to another, but it can be very, very pervasive. So my sense of anger, frustration, inadequacy, and then soothing in unhealthy ways, soothing by drinking too much and then kind of hating myself in the first place and hating the world around me and then starting to think, well, who cares what happens? Like, you know, there's some very dark thoughts and choices that came from a changed perspective of self in the world.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredibly important, powerful, powerfully important negative emotion is, right? That how a sense of guilt and shame and vulnerability can just pervade our entire life perspective. So all of a sudden we're swimming in a very different soup and it's a frightening soup and it's a toxic soup. And I'm most struck by that. And that goes along with the idea that we're not taught that emotion always beats logic. I think the idea of Descartes and the idea that we're rational creatures, you know, that kind of comes down to us through Western thought is like completely not true. Like we're rational creatures only if there is an emotion grabbing for our attention, right? Like, you know, we're attending to one another, we're being very logical, right? What we're doing now, if we heard a frightening noise right outside the door, like we'd be entirely different, right?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What does that mean? And now is this all coming for me now? Did I get so lucky for 25 years nothing bad happened but bad things are going to be happening? Am I cursed? Is my family cursed? In retrospect, I think I understood at the time to some degree, but not like I do now. I can put words to it now, right? Of like how.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly brought me face to face with the truths of life and death, because I had not had Major trauma before then. So there wasn't a major trauma sort of in my developmental years that what can carry forward is a sort of omnipotence defense, right? I mean, the thought is that when we're toddlers, we all have like an omnipotence defense, which is like, I can just try and get up and run and move. And if I run into something, I'll get up and do it again, right? That we, you know, we kind of have to, and it's partly the protection of the parent, et cetera, but we think we can get out there in the world and do things and we just do. And if we don't have major traumas, we can sort of carry through that, oh, like bad things aren't going to happen to me. You know, like I know that they're there and I know they happen to people, but they don't happen to me. And sometimes what will happen is being confronted with such a tragedy wipes that away very, very quickly. And then the person feels extremely exposed. Like, oh, I thought that I was going to be okay. And now I know that I'm not. And that can start to lead to, well, what's”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About, and I find myself sometimes having conversations with a person say, You know, I still do a lot of clinical care of having conversations with a person after a tragedy. And I can't believe, right? Again, I'm saying the things that this person didn't learn in elementary school because like none of us did, right? And then look at the misery and the suffering. And then I think this is one person among how many millions among us who try and go about their way without knowing things that are easily knowable because they don't even know that they're knowable because we don't teach them to ourselves.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not joking that I was mad. You know, second year after medical school, like how is it? Like I think of even things in my own life and, you know, how I, you know, how much shame I felt after my brother's suicide. I was already an adult, right? As a young adult, but I felt so much shame. I had no understanding that, oh, it's a reflex to trauma, right? To feel guilt and shame. And that, of course, I was feeling that. It didn't mean it was true because I felt it, but I mapped the fact that I felt ashamed to the fact that I should have felt guilty and ashamed and led to some very negative things in my life. I had to sort of pull myself back from and recover from. And like, I didn't know that I didn't know the automaticity of the reflex and how pervasive it can be and how it can put blinders on us. And I mean, it's just one example, but it's an example of something big that happens to people that we don't learn.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though it's being leveled against you is wrong, right? Like why? Do I take that or do I say, no, there's something more important here that we want to shepherd forward in ourselves as a culture? And I think preventing childhood trauma and changing the ways that we educate children and adults could, again, make a sea change and maybe set us on a course towards, even towards a greater likelihood of survival as a species.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or why just because I'm a little bit bigger do I want to go thump that other kid on the head? What's going on that we don't do those things? We're tripping ahead of ourselves and we don't stop and think how are we using our resources? How are we shepherding forward the next generation, which by the way is a generation that's going to determine our fates too, right? As we get older, but we don't do that. I often think of like in the Olympics, you see the great sprinters, right? And they've got to come out of the blocks perfectly, right? Because if they come out of the blocks a little bit too fast, they're going to fall over, right? They're going to just fall forward. And I often see that in my head about us as, you know, as humans and as a culture that we're rushing so far forward, we don't stop and say, wait, let's keep the basics here, the basic techniques of like how are we navigating forward in life? Or do we just throw all those away? Because I can get some benefit by saying that you're bad.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did I learn so much about unconscious motivation, about the impact of trauma, about how we can be envious and how we can act out, you know, even about how our emotions trump logic in us? Like, why don't we teach these things when we're young enough to understand? Like, why is that other kid bullying me?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not all just the evil. We see plenty of people who do good and who are generous of spirit. And we have both in us. And it is, as I think about our culture and what the seeds that we sow and the climate that we set, including putting governors and boundaries around like, how do we rein in or say that the more aggressive, the more envious or destructive is unacceptable, right? How do we foster the part that's kind and considerate and reflective and slow to judge of like, hey, let's learn a little bit more, like how do we foster that? And I think a lot of that comes back to early childhood education. I mean, I think we don't do nearly enough to protect children. And as a corollary to that, we don't do nearly enough to educate children. And we said, I want to write a book. Second book I write is going to be everything I needed to know about life. I learned as a second year postgraduate psychiatry resident. It's like, why? You know, why then?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It runs through all of my thoughts about life is the impact of trauma, right? Because trauma creates these false lessons and it walls us off from truth. And it starts to point towards the unhealthy ways of trying to feel better about ourselves. But we have the health in us. Two, we have those seeds of health too that can grow into being a steward of power and sharing power being considerate and kind. And we see a lot of that in the world.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As well as on others, we should want that for the health of ourselves and the world around us. So I think all of that is true, but there are also people who don't necessarily become corrupted by power, right? There can be an understanding and a grounding that they're a steward of power, right? You know, a shepherd. I mean, the ways people describe utilizing power and utilizing it in a benign way in a benign way that then fosters the healthy aspects of self right so like gratitude and humility right if i mean if we if we could add a healthy dose of gratitude and humility to everyone or to our society there would be a sea change right but how do you how do you feel gratitude how do you feel humility those things are incompatible with narcissism envy right with really the bad pole of things that we're talking about and part of the reason i you know i'm so focused in my work and in really”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Power is An accentuator, right? An intensifier. So I think it is true that there are people who can be, so if in a gray area where there are malignant narcissistic tendencies and behaviors, but there are also ways in which that person can think outside of themselves and think in a broader way and think sort of kindly about others. And they're sort of trying to navigate whether they're aware or not that they're trying to navigate between one and the other. And then the allure of power is, well, just look, just exercise that power and you'll feel better, right? It'll show you, right, that you're good enough. Look at the power you have. And whatever may be going on in the person's mind, that then power, yes, can corrupt. Yes, I think that's why we have to have checks and balances, right? Because we don't, you know, we are all inscrutable to ourselves, let alone to others. So we must have checks and balances and we should always have them on ourselves.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And the thing I would add to that is thought about culture. How does the cultures we're in, whether it's the culture of a household, the culture of a community, the culture of a nation or the world? How does that impact? What unfolds in that person? And then how does what unfolds in that person impact that culture?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not really because the words don't have clear definitions like psychopathy and sociopathy. There's no real definition of psychopath or psychopathy. Does that mean someone sociopathic but psychotic? Like there's really not a, we end up using those words colloquially, right? Which is why concepts that we can define, like envy, empathic attunement, narcissism, even though there might be nuances and definitions, like we can define them in ways that are widely accepted, including within psychology and psychiatry.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we can do sort of sociopathic things that but not be sociopathic, like, well, you know, you tell a white lie. It's like sort of sociopathy on steroids, right? Is then envy writ large is malignant narcissism”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once I have everything, I won't feel good enough about myself either, and I'll have to have more. It's like that's malignant narcissism, which we think of as sociopathy, right? Again, we can define these words in different ways, but they're very, very negative concepts. That's profound sociopathy, malignant narcissism, envy writ large.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have to have the most money, the most power, the most of anything, anything more than anyone else could challenge. But as long as I have that, it's okay that you have some too, right? And then that can make you happy and can make you like me, right? So benign narcissists can be well liked from that perspective, but it's still all about them and that can change if, for example, there's a scarcity of resources now, right? But they're generally, they're not people who are being overtly destructive, although that they're over the border into the envy territory, right? Malignant narcissists are very different where then want to have everything. So even if I have a thousand times more than you do, I still envy you what you have because I want to have, I don't think I can feel good enough about myself unless I have everything.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because one more thing about the narcissist is some people can be sort of benign narcissists where they want great things for themselves, right? But if they have enough great things, they can sort of tolerate others being happy too. And these are people who sometimes are actually quite highly liked, right? Because”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so there's a difference between the mechanics of empathy. So let's say, again, we can define things different ways. Let's say empathic attunement is the ability to be attuned and to think, okay, what's going on in you? What might you be thinking? What might you be feeling? Some people have a lot of empathic attunement, but we could look at that as mechanistic, right? It doesn't equate to care, right? An empathic attunement can come along with empathy or not, right? So yes, people who are narcissistic, they can mentalize well. So you mentalize meaning the ability to understand or to consider thoughts, feelings, motivations, and other people, right? So people who are narcissistic can have empathic attunement or mentalization depending upon how we want to describe those things, but that has nothing to do with care, with actual empathy or kindness or...”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, I mean, I don't mean care about in that, like, being caring at all. I mean, caring about in that noticing that the person exists, right? I mean, someone who wants money and notices that there's a hundred dollar bill out cares about that, right? They don't care about the $100 bill and that doesn't mean anything to them. It doesn't have thoughts and feelings, but it's going to attract attention. They care about it because it's something that they want, right? The same way people will care about others, but only from the perspective of, do you have things that I want? Or can I feel better about myself by taking something from you, by making things worse for you?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an incredibly intense focus upon individuals and demographics of people. But the priority, the goal is entirely about the self, which is why it can become easy to say, I don't care if a million people die, right? That's how different is that from going out and destroying one person or a million people, right? It's in the same category of those people only. Their existence is only meaningful in how it relates to me.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Narcissistic people definitely care about other people, right? It's the people who are schizoid, right? And say that don't necessarily register other people, right? But narcissism, people care about other people, but it's entirely vis- ⁇-vis the self, right? If I'm schizoid, I don't really notice or care much who you are, right? But if I'm narcissistic, I absolutely care because I'm watching every last detail of you, what might you have that's better than me?”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So narcissism is a deep, pervasive and unquestioned sense of inadequacy in the self that comes along with anger and fear and vulnerability, fear of destruction, fear of annihilation that is compensated for by aggression, by the mechanics of envy, by trying to make the self seem better at the expense of others by taking from others, by being completely cavalier to the thoughts and feelings of others, that narcissism is not arrogance. Narcissism is the opposite of arrogance. There is such a deep sense of inadequacy and incompetence in the self that the defensive structure around that Becomes dominated by rocket-fueled envy.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that narcissism is not frequent compared to a lot of other things. So it's small in terms of their narcissistic diagnosis, right? It's much less than many other things. But it causes the lion's share. I don't just mean the most compared to anything else. But I think more than 50%, the majority of bad things, evil things, destructive things that I see in the world around us. I think narcissists are wildly destructive because they are driven completely. They are lodged completely in the lane of envy.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I am struck 20 years of doing what I do now. I've been a psychiatrist for 20 years and I practice in so many different settings and I consult in different settings. I've been fortunate to have a very wide purview of what's going on in people and in the world around us. And I am struck with amazement that of all the things I see that are, say, abnormal, let's say from the mental health perspective, this could be depression, panic attacks, hearing voices, addiction, but there's so many things that cover everything.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they have a giant lasso and they harness the envy of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people. That's right. You feel worse about yourself too. Doesn't matter what the reasons are. Maybe it's your childhood. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's job failings. Maybe it's professional. Maybe it's personal. It doesn't matter. You have NV2. Let's put it together and do some destruction because that'll make us feel better, which is a lie.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the Nazis, and I think there's a parallel to do we value truth? Can we stand together and say, no matter how much I might disagree with you politically, right? We can still understand that there's right and there's wrong, right? There's truth and there's lies, right? So I think those are just two examples of determinants of culture. And then the culture is a determinant of, you know, is someone like Hitler marginalized as like that's a crazy evil person. Oh my goodness, like whoa, right? Or is that someone who gains a greater following and more adherence? And then there starts to be a momentum. Because why? Because what did”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then it's going to foster all of those things. So then you think about just in a painting with a very broad brush, the culture created in Germany prior to the Second World War and like what was the impact of the reparations after the First World War, right? Of the punishing reparations, impoverishment. And basically humiliation, right, that people were feeling. Okay, like there were a whole bunch of decisions that impacted that cultural perspective, right? Then there must have been aspects just like I see in many ways parallels in America now of what are our standards for what we're communicating to others, right? How is the media deciding like what's real and what's not real, what's true, what's not true, what's hatred that is only going to do evil versus what's hatred that's okay because I might sell something by putting it out there. I mean, that was, we know that was going on in Germany during the rise.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% 100% I think that to me is a massive point we're talking about layers of emergence right so if there's an individual consciousness boy Then there's culture And we're products of the soup we swim in, so to speak. People would say that when I was growing up, right? We're products of the soup we swim in. So if the soup that we're swimming in is the soup of hatred.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to make my trinket better. I want to think mine's the best one. I could destroy yours, right? Then, you know, we're letting our mind go over that border. And do we say, run that forward, right? Let's run that forward and put people around us who feel the same way and start doing it so we think less of ourselves and we debase ourselves. Do we run headlong in or do we come over that boundary? And that's maybe the capacity for evil in us, that we come over that boundary, all of us, right, at times. But do we come over it and then say, no, that's not my choice. That's not my self-definition. I'm coming back.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a big thing to go over the border, right? That the border is in a gray area, right? There's a border to go over. And I think that I agree completely. One, certainly about trauma, that the more trauma there is, because then the more misunderstandings there are about self and feelings that I'm not good enough. And then that can be anger about why and who might be oppressing me. And, you know, I hate myself and everyone else who seems to be better. So the trauma can drive us in these negative directions, but we're still crossing over something, right? So if you have the trinket and I think that's awesome, I want that. I want to work harder. You know what I could do though is I could sneak in tonight when no one's around and I could move something. No, no way. I don't want to do that, right? It's like I came over the border a little bit and I thought maybe that's a better way, but then I came back, right? And we're responsible for that, right? Because it is a choice to say, I don't want to work hard. I'm already working how hard.”
2023-02-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source